Holocaust Testimonies: Reassessing Survivors’ Voices and Their Future in Challenging Times

Close to a time when there will be no more survivors to speak about their suffering, this innovative study takes much-needed stock of the past, present and future of Holocaust testimony.

Drawing from a vast range of witness accounts - including a never-before-published survivor interview - and carefully situating analysis within broader historical and political discourses, this international team of scholars address many pertinent issues of testimony in the post-witness age. These include: questions of representation and testimony form; memory politics and the role of the witness; the legacy of the Holocaust and impact on future generations; the digital turn and issues of access; and gender and testimony in the wake of #MeToo. Stressing the importance of re-assessing, re-contextualizing, and re-presenting testimonies, these essays make a powerful case for the ongoing centrality of witnesses and witnessing in Holocaust research, education and memory. In doing so, Holocaust Testimonies skillfully paves the way for future research with survivor testimonies.

Boaz Cohen is Senior Lecturer and Head of Holocaust Studies at Western Galilee College, Israel. He is the author of Israeli Holocaust Research: Birth and Evolution (2013) and the editor of Was Their Voice Heard - On Early Children’s Testimonies (2016).

Wolf Gruner is Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History at University of Southern California, USA. He is the author of many books, including Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis (2006) and the prize-winning The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia (2019).

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan is Leon Levine Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Judaic and Peace Studies and Professor of History at Appalachian State University, USA. He is the author of The Language of Nazi Genocide (2009) and co-editor of Beyond ’Ordinary Men’: Christopher R. Browning and Holocaust Historiography (2019) and Resisting Persecution: Jews and their Petitions During the Holocaust (2020).

Miriam Offer is Senior Lecturer in the Holocaust Studies Program at Western Galilee College, Israel and Lecturer in the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She is the author of White Coats Inside the Ghetto: Jewish Medicine in Poland During the Holocaust (2015).